“One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”
John Donne book Holy Sonnets
No. 10, line 13
Holy Sonnets (1633)
"On Reading Fawcett's Lines On Revisiting Scenes Of Early Life" in Poems of the Late Francis Scott Key, Esq. (1857), p. 87.
Context: p>So sings the world's fond slave! so flies the dream
Of life's gay morn; so sinks the meteor ray
Of fancy into darkness; and no beam
Of purer light shines on the wanderer's way.So sings not he who soars on other wings
Than fancy lends him; whom a cheering faith
Warms and sustains, and whose freed spirit springs
To joys that bloom beyond the reach of death.And thou would'st live again! again dream o'er
The wild and feverish visions of thy youth
Again to wake in sorrow, and deplore
Thy wanderings from the peaceful paths of truth! Yet yield not to despair! be born again,
And thou shalt live a life of joy and peace,
Shall die a death of triumph, and thy strain
Be changed to notes of rapture ne'er to cease.</p
“One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”
John Donne book Holy Sonnets
No. 10, line 13
Holy Sonnets (1633)
Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 77
Variant: Accuse not thyself overmuch, deeming that thy tribulation and thy woe is all thy fault...
“Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator
The Choice
Context: Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die
Outstretch'd in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
Thou say'st: "Man's measur'd path is all gone o'er:
Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
Man clomb until he touch'd the truth; and I,
Even I, am he whom it was destin'd for."
How should this be? Art thou then so much more
Than they who sow'd, that thou shouldst reap thereby?
Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) British hymn writer and theologian
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 44.